1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control program, a controlling method of a printing apparatus, and a print control unit provided with the program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a printing system having a tandem printing function by which a print job is shared to a plurality of printing apparatuses has been widely used so that the print job can be carried out in a short period of time. The tandem printing function is a function in which, for example, in an attempt to make a plurality of sets of copies as one copy job, the sets of copies are shared between a master (main printing apparatus) and a slave (sub-printing apparatus) and respective copying processes for each of the shared copies are carried out in parallel. Alternatively, in such a function, in an attempt to output a plurality of sets of prints as one printer job, the sets of prints are shared between a master and a slave and respective printing processes for each of the shared prints are carried out in parallel. In the above-mentioned printing system, the respective printing apparatuses are connected to each other with a one-to-one relationship, or connected to one another through a network.
In order to carry out the print job more efficiently, a technique for evaluating printing capabilities of the respective apparatuses and performing distributed processing depending on the printing capabilities has been disclosed (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-342055, for example).
Although the tandem printing function has been developed in order to carry out printing processes more efficiently, the conventional technique thereof has much to be improved so as to achieve more efficient processes. Here, the term “efficient process” is used in a broad sense and corresponds any of the printing process which enables a shortened printing period of time, reduced time-consuming tasks required for installing and setting a printing apparatus and a print control unit, reduced time-consuming tasks for recovery from a processing error or reduced time-consuming tasks required for the user to set conditions for a print job to be executed.
First, upon installing the printing apparatus and the print control unit, various setups for setting various pieces of information have been required in order to enable the tandem printing functions. Moreover, the information required for using the tandem printing functions for executing the printer job are set and held on the print control unit (host) side, and the information required for using the tandem printing functions for executing the copy job are set and held on the printing apparatus (multi function peripheral, MFP) side. This is because setups of the conditions for the printer job are conducted on the host side while the setups for the copy job are conducted on the MFP side without communicating with the host. This method is taken so that the information used for the setups of the conditions is easily acquired on the side at which the setup processes have been conducted. However, the information held on the host side and the information held on the MFP side result in overlapping considerably. System administrators who organize and supervise the printing system or installation service personnel usually set the above-mentioned pieces of information. Such personnel are subjected to heavy burden upon carrying out setups due to the overlapped pieces of information.
Moreover, after the setups have been made, the set pieces of information have to be updated according to a change in any connecting environment such as apparatuses and a network. Otherwise, in some cases, the effective processes in accordance with the respective apparatuses and with the structure of the network would not be achieved. In addition, without properly updating the information, a print job might be shared in such a manner that the master and the slave can not actually execute the shared print jobs. Upon request of such a shared print jobs, a processing error occurs. Consequently, the resulting problem is that the user has to conduct time-consuming tasks in solving the error.